a cautionary tail (saw ignitied)

[Charlieh]

Last week I had an interesting situation arise on a harvesting site. I had grabbed a combi can and saw out the truck to sned a couple of poles out and went to fill the saw (MS260). The can had a bit of pressure in it and it sprayed a bit onto the saw and the floor. I waited about 1minute checking chain etc. Walked a few paces and pulled the saw over.

 

What happened next took me buy surprise. The saw burst into flames, I flung it and it managed to ignite the spilt fuel on the floor, all within 10ft of the back of the pickup with diesel and cans of two stroke. I kicked the combi can about 10ft away as that was on the ground. I rolled the saw over a few times but it was still flaming well, so I grabbed a couple of the bottles of water out the truck (as the extinguisher was about 100yards away) and doused the saw.

 

What (on disassembly) had happened was the ht lead on the saw had rubbed the AV mount and the shielding had failed. As a result when the saw was pulled over it sparked to the av mount, and the residual fuel ignited.

 

There were a couple of basic mistakes that ordinarily wouldn't cause a problem, but when combined together they could had been a whole load worse.

[Stubby]

On hot days I always vent the combi can first . Wont help the split HT lead but stops the spillage . Sounds like you were busy there for a few seconds !

[TGB]

I know I should vent the can on hot days... before filling. But sometimes my mind's on something else and the resultant spurt always makes me think:

• You should know better

• That's an expensive waste of Aspen